How Comcast and NBCUniversal Used Minions to Fuse an Empire

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“Minions” took in about $115.2 million on its opening weekend, one of the biggest animated openings on record, and went on to gross $1.16 billion worldwide.CreditCreditIllumination Entertainment/Universal Pictures, via Associated Press

Minions, the impish fire hydrant-shaped yellow misfits who exist to serve the world’s most evil villains, would appear to be unlikely mascots for corporate synergy at Comcast, one of the world’s largest media conglomerates.

The animated characters made their debut in 2010 in Universal Pictures’ “Despicable Me,” backing up the wicked mastermind Gru in his quest to steal the moon. At the time, federal regulators were reviewing Comcast’s bid to take control of NBCUniversal, the owner of the NBC broadcast network, a bundle of cable television networks, a film studio and theme park business.

Brian L. Roberts, the chief executive of Comcast, had long dreamed of building a new industry behemoth that would unite the cable company his father started in 1963 with the flashy world of world of television, news, movies and theme parks.

Doing so, he believed, would allow the combined company to lead both the distribution and development of content in an era when people increasingly watched what they wanted when and how they wanted to.

Mr. Roberts ended up winning his prize, agreeing to more than 150 government-imposed conditions to close the deal for NBCUniversal. And the steady rise of the Minions — who went on to star in two more lucrative movies and also help to promote several other Comcast assets — illustrate how the two sides of the company have come together to champion certain business initiatives and, according to several financial metrics, prospered.

“It started as a concept and a guiding principle, and now it is the secret sauce,” Mr. Roberts said.

The story provides a template for looking at AT&T’s proposed $85 billion takeover of Time Warner, and what might transpire on the consumer, business and regulatory fronts should that deal win approval. AT&T and Time Warner have promised to “lead the next wave of innovation” as the worlds of media, communications and technology collide.

There are broad similarities. Both deals feature a big TV distributor acquiring a big entertainment company that owns a bundle of television networks, news operations and movie studios. Comcast is the country’s largest cable company, selling television, broadband and phone service to 28.3 million customers. AT&T is the country’s largest television distributor after its acquisition last year of DirecTV, and counts more than 100 million subscribers across its wireless, broadband and TV offerings.

Consumer groups denounced both deals with similar complaints: that they stifle competition, create unfair pricing and spur even more consolidation in an industry already controlled by relatively few companies. And some Washington experts have pointed to the conditions placed on Comcast’s deal for NBCUniversal as being too difficult to enforce — a harbinger, they say, of similar problems with an AT&T-Time Warner merger.

Comcast says there has been just one violation of the conditions attached to its deal, but critics point to several disputes. They also point out that the conditions expire in 2018.

The disputes include a run-in with Bloomberg L.P., which complained to the Federal Communications Commission that Comcast had placed its business television network in the remote confines of the cable lineup. The F.C.C. agreed and ordered Comcast to remedy the situation. Critics also cite the $800,000 fine Comcast received in 2012 for not adequately informing customers about the option to subscribe to just broadband service without paying for phone or cable.

“There are some examples of real concerns about these kinds of consent decrees working, because the company that faces limitations has an arsenal of lawyers and resources to fight against those who seek to take advantage of the consent decree,” said Gene Kimmelman, chief executive of Public Knowledge, a Washington-based public interest group, and a former antitrust official at the Justice Department.

“On the other hand, the limitations in the decree have created an opportunity for a variety of online services to grow and expand,” Mr. Kimmelman said. “I don’t think it is pure market forces that enabled Netflix to explode, Sling TV to grow and companies like Amazon to invest more in online distribution.”

Still, AT&T is already facing a regulatory dispute over DirecTV, the satellite company it acquired in 2015. Last week, the Justice Department filed suit against DirecTV asserting that it had colluded with other cable companies in the Los Angeles region over carriage of the SportsNet LA channel, thus preventing Dodgers baseball games from being widely available.

“In general when you want to clear a giant merger with the DoJ you want to avoid being sued by the DoJ,” John Bergmayer, a senior counsel at Public Knowledge, said in a twitter post.

There are several differences between the AT&T proposal and the Comcast-NBCUniversal deal. For one, Comcast acquired NBCUniversal when its broadcast, movie and theme park businesses all were struggling. Most stark was NBC, which had been in last place among the four major broadcast networks for seven years in a row.

AT&T, on the other hand, is buying Time Warner at what several analysts have called its peak.

AT&T is rooted in the wireless business and has little experience in entertainment. AT&T executives said last week that Time Warner would continue to operate much the way it does today. And Time Warner has long had a culture that engendered competition, rather than collaboration, among its business units.

“There are definitely a lot of analogies,” Amy Yong, an analyst with Macquarie Research, said about the two deals. “But the AT&T-Time Warner deal is as much about the future, with mobility and targeting millennials, as it is about content and distribution coming together.”

That’s a significant contrast to Comcast, which was led by Mr. Roberts and Stephen B. Burke, Comcast’s chief operating officer who went on to become the chief executive of NBCUniversal after the deal. Both men are big believers in collaboration and have a deep understanding of the distribution and the content sides of the media industry.

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Supporters of the AT&T-Time Warner deal say Comcast’s acquisition of NBCUniversal in 2013 shows that such a transaction can be successful.CreditBrendan Mcdermid/Reuters

Mr. Burke, the son of a television executive, worked at Disney for more than a decade before joining Comcast, where he ran the company’s cable operations. Mr. Burke’s closest friends and family had questioned his decision to join Comcast in 1998, when it was considered a relatively small, regional cable company. But in discussing the job with Mr. Roberts, the men had agreed on a grand vision: First expand Comcast’s cable footprint, then make a bold move into the content business.

Over the years, Comcast famously tried to get into the entertainment business, including with an unsuccessful hostile takeover attempt of the Walt Disney Company in 2004.

Immediately after Comcast took control of NBCUniversal, Mr. Burke installed a new leadership team and started working to create a culture where employees would be rewarded for collaboration.

Comcast executives say the takeover, which occurred in two steps and was valued at about $30 billion, has benefited both sides of the company. Mr. Burke checked off the successes during a recent conference call: At NBCUniversal, operating cash flow has doubled in the five and a half years since Comcast took control of the company; NBC has started the television season in first place for the fourth season in a row; the film studio has delivered two record years of profits; and the theme park business has quadrupled its cash flow.

At Comcast’s cable operations, the company’s third-quarter results for its video business were the best in 10 years, and earnings for its broadband business were the best in seven years.

While impressive, some analysts questioned whether they were the result of the combination.

Comcast executives would beg to differ, pointing to the results of Project Symphony, a strategy that Mr. Burke created soon after the Comcast-NBCUniversal deal closed to get the company’s units working together. The plan entailed companywide promotion of major projects like the Olympic Games, Jimmy Fallon’s late-night talk show, new cable technologies and the bright-yellow Minions, the product of Universal Pictures’ Illumination Entertainment, which is led by Chris Meledandri.

“Despicable Me 2” was identified as a top Project Symphony priority in advance of its opening in 2013. The film received special promotion across Comcast’s businesses and grossed $970 million worldwide, a nearly 80 percent increase from the first film in the franchise.

When the Minions returned in 2015 with their namesake film, they once again received top-priority treatment. The promotion across Comcast was wide, including a trailer on NBC’s “The Voice,” a Super Bowl commercial during NBC’s broadcast of the game, a promotion on the cable guide, a theme park scavenger hunt, talent appearances across NBC broadcast and cable networks and much more.

“Minions” took in about $115.2 million on its opening weekend, one of the biggest animated openings on record, and went on to gross $1.16 billion worldwide.

The Minions have also done their part for the company. They have bounced in to promote Comcast’s voice-controlled TV remote, NBC’s hit fall drama “This Is Us,” and the theatrical release of the Universal Pictures animated musical comedy “Sing.” Visitors to Universal theme parks can even become a Minion on a 3-D ride.